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Zombie pigmen spawn in groups of 4 in the Nether, twice as often as ghasts. They are also capable of spawning on the bottom row of obsidian in a Nether portal frame, the same way the player spawns when emerging from a portal.[1] Zombie pigmen can also appear rarely in the Overworld when Lightning strikes within 3-4 blocks of a pig. If the player is riding the pig when lightning hits it, a zombie pigman will appear on top of the player.

On Halloween (October 31st), zombie pigmen have a chance of spawning with a pumpkin (22.5%) or jack o'lantern (2.5%) equipped as headgear.

In the Pocket Edition, there is no Nether, instead they will spawn when the Nether reactor is successfully activated, as long as the difficulty is not peaceful.

If a zombie pigman wearing a pumpkin or jack o'lantern is killed using a tool enchanted with Looting, there will be a chance equivalent to the level of Looting used to drop the pumpkin or jack o'lantern, up to a maximum of a 3% chance of a drop.

Like wild wolves, zombie pigmen are not initially hostile, but all zombie pigmen in the area will become aggressive and converge on the player if any individual is attacked. This only applies to the player; mobs that provoke zombie pigmen will only be attacked by that specific individual.

When idle, zombie pigmen move relatively slowly, but if aggravated their speed will significantly increase. They will make an aggressive noise between 0 to 39 ticks after they are attacked.

In addition, some zombie pigmen will have the ability to spawn reinforcements when attacked, similar to zombies. Due to a bug, the spawned reinforcement will sometimes be a regular zombie. Like zombies, zombie pigmen will sometimes bang on wooden doors, and in Hard difficulty, even break them. However, they cannot damage iron doors.[2]

Zombie pigmen have a chance of spawning as baby zombie pigmen. They can also ride chickens, much like regular baby zombies.

Like players, zombie pigmen are capable of traveling through nether portals.

Zombie pigmen can drown, but are immune to fire and lava damage.

Like most mobs, they can ride in minecarts, so if you decide to create a rail in the Nether or by a portal to the Nether, it is likely that you'll see one riding in it.

In the Pocket Edition, they are always hostile, but have a shorter sight distance than other hostile mobs.

If provoked, zombie pigmen will crowd around and try to overwhelm the player by ganging up on them. An aggravated group of pigmen is a force to be reckoned with, as each member will deal 9 () points of damage to the player per sword hit (on Normal difficulty, assuming no armor is worn), and they are faster than the player's walking speed. In order to outrun zombie pigmen, a player must sprint, get away on a horse, or use a potion of swiftness. A player may also manage to find a location out of reach of the zombie pigmen and their swords (pillar jumping and ladders can help). Ideally, this will let the player kill them without being hurt, though ghasts may pose a problem. The actions that affect hostility are:

When attacked by the player, all zombie pigmen within a 67×67×21 to 111×111×21 area centered on the attacked pigman will become hostile.

They will attack the player who hit the initial zombie pigman, and will traverse complicated paths around the Nether until they eventually reach the player. This can often cause lingering zombie pigmen to attack the player moments after they have killed off nearby pigmen, thus causing the player to hit those pigmen, causing more zombie pigmen to become aggressive toward the player. With this in mind, zombie pigmen fights can be very exhausting, and it is advised not to alarm them if survival is a priority.

Traveling far enough from the area will cause them to despawn and make it safe again, provided you do not attack any other zombie pigmen on the way back.

Zombie pigmen will remain hostile for 20–39.95 seconds (losing the speed boost), although they will continue to pursue an already-targeted player after this time until the player dies or escapes their 40 block pursuit radius.

Approaching an already hostile zombie pigman causes it to sound an alarm call, angering other zombie pigman in a 40-block radius.

Pushing a zombie pigman off a cliff or otherwise causing environmental damage to them will not make them hostile.

However, damaging zombie pigmen with TNT ignited with flint and steel or flaming arrows will make them hostile, because these count as player-induced damage.

Similarly, damaging zombie pigmen with a redirected ghast fireball will make them hostile.

Baby Zombie Pigmen can chase the player even faster than normal zombie pigmen when provoked, and do not lose their initial speed boost, sometimes catching up even when the player is sprinting. This, combined with their ability to squeeze through one-block high gaps, having a one-block high hitbox and their ability to ride chickens, makes them a more significant threat than their grown brethren if made hostile.

The forgiveness timer does not advance for zombie pigmen in unloaded chunks. Thus, if the player enters a nether portal and returns, any provoked zombie pigmen in the area will still be aggressive unless another player was nearby to keep the chunks loaded. It is also possible for aggressive zombie pigmen to enter a portal while the player is still in the Nether, and these individuals will attack the player as soon as they return to the Overworld.

For the same reason, dying will not cause zombie pigmen to become neutral towards the player, regardless of whether or not they killed you.

Switching the difficulty to Peaceful will cause all zombie pigmen to despawn completely. It will also reset their neutrality if the difficulty is changed to something else afterward, as the newly spawned zombie pigmen will be neutral. Baby pigmen riding chickens will despawn, but the chickens won't, which can lead to the presence of random poultry in the Nether.

If you kill a zombie pigman in one hit, the others will not aggro on you.

Zombie pigmen wield a golden sword in their right hand, and wear a loincloth. Occasionally, the Sword will have an enchantment on it, visible as a shimmering purple sheen. This chance increases at higher difficulties, and the sword's enchantment will more commonly be of a higher level.

In Pocket Edition, zombie pigmen are missing their face (hat layer) and appear to have merely a dry skull for a head (see gallery). It is unknown whether it is a bug or if it's meant to happen. Baby zombie pigmen in the PC version also look like this, due to MC-33420.

Since zombie pigmen spawn in the Nether and in Nether portals in the Overworld, players can build a zombie pigman farm in either dimension which provides a steady stream of gold nuggets. Additionally, players can obtain gold ingots and gold swords as rare drops.

The green liquid in the zombie pigman skin was originally blood red,[3] but this was changed for an unknown reason, probably because it looked too gory. The skin file has "THX XAPHOBIA" written on it as a credit by Notch to the skin's original creator, XaPhobia.

Zombie pigmen were originally presented as unarmed passive creatures in a preview before the Halloween Update.

Zombie pigmen, skeletons and zombies can be damaged by splash potions of healing, and will be healed by splash potions of harming. In addition, a sword enchanted with Smite will do extra damage to zombie pigmen.

Now only drop gold nuggets/gold swords when killed by the player, either through combat or potions, or player-activated mechanisms such as manually lit TNT. If killed without player intervention, only drops rotten flesh. This makes automatic gold farms impossible.

If a baby pig gets struck by lightning, it will often become an adult zombie pigman.

If a pig in the overworld is struck by multiple lightning bolts simultaneously, multiple zombie pigmen will spawn. However, this is extremely unlikely without using /summon to spawn multiple lighting bolts.

If a zombie pigman is hit by a projectile, such as a skeleton's arrow, only the zombie pigman who was shot will attack it, but only when attacking a player. If hit in this state, the zombie pigman will either stand still or hit the skeleton once before standing completely still. This behavior is shared among many other mobs.[citation needed]

Zombie pigmen are not immune to lightning bolts.

You can hear their sound effects of them being angry far away and even all the way down to the bedrock layer, like thunder and ghast noises.

Zombie pigmen will turn hostile towards the player even when hit by "non-harmful" projectiles such as eggs, ender pearls and snowballs.

You are able to "trade" swords with zombie pigmen by throwing them a sword that is better than their golden sword. They have a 33% chance of dropping their golden sword and pick up the sword the player threw. This is a good tactic on getting swords with enchants due to zombie pigmen having a chance of spawning with an enchanted sword.

After giving a zombie pigman a sword that's better than their own, you can "customize" the pigman by giving it armor, enchanted or not. In the event you do customize your zombie pigmen, it is advised that you switch into creative mode, or keep them in a pen. You can reclaim your armor and sword without ever making the pigmen hostile by using drowning or suffocation traps.

If a zombie pigman wears a mob head, it will only show on the "skeleton" part of its face.

This is because the pig half is the hat layer of the zombie pigman's skin, and mob heads will not cover the hat layer.

The zombie pigmen in the Pocket Edition and the baby pigmen that rarely spawn do not have a hat layer, and therefore lack the pink skin on their heads.

When riding a minecart, a hostile zombie pigman can slowly move the minecart by itself along the rail while trying to chase the player.

Occasionally, zombie pigmen may swim up lava springs. Due to their fire resistance, though, this will not harm them directly, but they may take fall damage (and possibly even be killed) upon touching solid ground afterwards since lava does not prevent fall damage.

A zombie pigman without a skull. It does not wear it because some of the data shows it to be a 'villager' type. This is because the zombie pigman and the zombie share some of the data. The skull can be added with the use of a resource pack.

The texture file of a zombie pigman including a villager head. The skull on the lower half will render if the zombie pigman is a villager.

Zombie pigman with no skull in-game.

A baby zombie pigman.

A zombie pigman that recently spawned around a portal in the Overworld.

A baby zombie pigman without a skull.

A golden sword, gold Ingot, and gold nugget that dropped from a zombie pigman that was killed in the Overworld.

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